David Cage has discussed his upcoming project in length at gamescom 2012, focusing on performance capture, scripting and the themes he hopes to express in Quantic Dreams’ latest outing.

When discussing Beyond: Two Souls, he revealed just how difficult it is for the cast to deliver realistic performances.

“Our actors all had to learn their lines and deliver them from memory. Ellen had hundreds of pages, worth about three or four movies.”

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Amazingly, Cage confirmed he wrote the entire script- a mere 2,000 pages worth. With the dialogue complete, he was extremely keen to improve on the performance of his cast.

“We gained another dimension in the actor’s performance as we used full performance capture to record body language. If you look at me as I say this, you can see how I’m saying it. You lose that in motion capture.”

Such work has been heavily invested in by the studio. Cage wanted to distinguish the differences between motion capture, where the movements of the body are recorded, and performance capture, where the body, face and voice is recorded in sync.

A lot of time and work has been invested on performance capture. Mo-cap is body capture, whereas performance is the body, face and voice in sync.

Heavy Rain featured motion capture. Face and voice was shot in a sound booth, then the mo-cap stage added body animation of the actor in sync with their voice. Most games do this method as its the most convenient, but this splits the actor’s performance in two. This isn’t a natural process, and is something Cage wants to eliminate in the future.

Comparing his latest project to Heavy Rain once more, Cage revealed Beyond: Two Souls has roughly the same budget. He also added the two share similar themes, focusing on the development of relationships.

“This game is not about paranormal events. It’s about relationships, growing, and about how the different moments in your life define who you are. It’s about death, about something that will happen to all of you here one day. It’s about emotions people feel, how they think, how they act and how they fear death – about what lies beyond on the other side.”

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